For the Soul
by DaphneRunning
Summary: Levi thinks he's dying. Irvin thinks he needs a bowl of soup. Set a few months after their first meeting.


When Levi was young, he'd thought that rich people didn't get sick.

It didn't make sense that they could, living up in the fresh, clean air like the stuff above Wall Rose. Everyone had always known that the rich didn't breathe the same shit as everyone Below, and that's why you saw so many kids from Below running around with handkerchiefs over their faces when the rich walked around with their faces held high.

As a kid, Levi had thought it mattered.

Then a man had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck during a trial-not his own, his own was the next day-and asked him if he wanted his death to mean something.

Now that he breathes clean air and doesn't have to buy new shit-soaked boots every few months, Levi had thought he'd never be sick again...which is what makes this sudden illness all the more troubling.

"I don't know what it _is_," he croaks at Irvin, frustrated. If these are going to be his last days on earth, he's at least going to make sure he finds out what the hell is killing him. "I can survive _anything_. I got Mummer's Ague when I was six, I don't have a single stupid spot left over. And I got the Bronze John when I was eleven _and_ fifteen, and my whole fucking _gang_ got poxed every summer, and _nothing_ felt like this!"

Irvin crouches down next to his bed, elbows resting on his knees. "What does it feel like?" he asks.

"Like I can't _breathe!_" He's frustrated, and hates the helplessness of being ill, of not being able to defend himself. "It aches all over and I keep throwing up, and my whole face is all plugged up."

Irvin's eyebrows draw together. "Is that it?"

Levi slams a fist weakly into the wall by his bed. "I know something worse is gonna happen," he says miserably, "but I don't know when. That's always how it starts, and then you start shitting blood all over yourself and your guts turn to mush and you don't know _when._"

Irvin stands, looking at him with an unreadable expression. Then, he says, "Try not to shit blood all over yourself before I get back," and leaves the room.

It's a long, difficult night. Levi tosses and turns, going through sweats and chills by turns, coughing weakly and being unable to breathe properly, waking up every hour to stare at himself in the mirror for fear that the spots are going to start.

None of the men like Irvin can understand what it was like, Below. Irvin has the reek of a man that grew up with money, wanting to be a hero and fight titans beyond the wall because it was glorious, and because he was the sort of man who'd always wind up being a hero. He's never understood the luxury of sleeping in a bed no one else sleeps in, not worrying about what other bugs and sicknesses those other people brought in, and which one of the five kinds of mold on his stolen food would give him worms that ate his guts from the inside out.

Maybe that's the difference between them. Maybe it always will be. Levi curls up, freezing and chilled, and remembers vaguely that at least when he was leading his team, he hadn't worried about dying alone. He'd die in blood and shit, but not alone in a nice bed.

Somewhere around sunrise, the door opens again. Levi's bundled up in as many blankets as he owns (military-standard one), and opens crusty eyes to look balefully at the door. Irvin stands there, a small satchel in one hand, looking over his shoulder before shutting and locking the door behind him. "Got you something. Still alive?"

"Mmmhff."

"Good enough." Irvin takes a seat near the bed, opens the satchel, and pulls out a small ceramic tub, sealed tightly with a pressure-locked lid. A vague memory of years past reminds Levi of breaking into some rich guy's house and seeing a few of those in the kitchen, though what they'd been used for he had no idea then or now.

Now, Irvin pops off the lid, and the smell of something savory and somehow _gentle_ wafts up, unfamiliar and tempting. "I guess you've never tried this, huh?"

"The shit is that?" Levi demands, looking warily at the tub. "Some kind of cure?"

"Best kind," Irvin says calmly, and pulls his spoon off of his belt. At the face Levi makes, he rolls his eyes and picks up Levi's off the nearby table instead. "I _do_ wash it," he mutters.

"Not often enough. Are-is that medicine?" He's heard about medicine.

Irvin takes a spoonful of the stuff-weird, it's _chunky_-and raises it to his lips. "Blow if it's too hot."

Levi blows suspiciously, then allows Irvin to tip the spoon into his mouth. The stuff, whatever it is, tastes better than pretty much anything he's ever put in his mouth. He has to eat noisily, breathing through his mouth and spilling occasionally to keep breathing around his stuffed-up nose, but he manages all the same.

"It never occurred to me," Irvin says quietly, feeding him steadily as he does, "that you hadn't ever had a cold before, or a flu."

"Mm? I've been plenty cold."

"Haven't you ever just had the sniffles? Or a cough, without it turning into anything worse?"

Levi shakes his head, swallowing another warm, comforting bite. "Always turns to something worse."

"Not when you clean up properly. Sometimes it's just this, and it passes in a few days. And the best remedy is a nice bowl of chicken soup."

Levi's lidded eyes widen. He looks down at the spoon, over at the bowl, and up to Irvin. "You're shitting me."

"My mother's recipe. I asked her to make me a batch, and brought it down in my military bag."

"Might as well feed me fucking gold," Levi mutters, and draws his knees up to his chest. Irvin's taken a liking to him, that much is obvious. He's been around the man for a few months now, and he hasn't seen Irvin pick up any _other_ boys off death row, so this probably isn't just something he does, but… "You could get arrested for smuggling like that."

"I won't." Irvin gives him a rare, small smile. "Because you're going to eat all the evidence. Open up."

Levi doesn't have to say that no one's ever taken care of him like this before. That's probably obvious in the jerky, ungracious way he accepts each spoonful, eating almost vindictively for every moment he'd been puking up his guts Below and only had a crust of hard moldy bread to chew on. He can't help but think of Tibby, one of his boys in the Ring of Chaos, and how he'd been able to do _nothing_ as the kid started sweating blood all over him, fluids running steadily out of both ends, after drinking from the wrong man's well. It had been a decoy, the man sick of kids coming into his place at night and snatching from his stores, so he'd poisoned his own well and simply purchased water from his neighbors as the street boys died in their lairs.

Chicken soup probably wouldn't have helped back then.

"What did your mother make for you?" Irvin asks, spooning in another mouthful. "When you were sick."

"Nothing. She booted me out so I didn't give it to her."

Irvin's handsome face twists in a grimace. "How old were you?"

"First time? I dunno, six? She let me back in after a few months. The last time I was eleven."

"And how many years ago was that? Three? Four? Ten?"

Irvin asks lightly, and Levi just bites the edge of the spoon. "Wouldn't you like to know."

"You'll have to put your age on your paperwork for entering the Scouting Legion, and then I'll know."

"I'll lie and they'll never check."

"They might check. I might make them."

"Then I'll tell everyone you brought me contraband."

"Ungrateful wretch. I'm saving your sinuses."

You're saving more than that. He won't say that, of course. That's fucking cheesy. Even if it would make Irvin happy, he can't be that gross.

He manages half of the bowl, and Irvin locks the lid back on. "The rest will be here if you need it," he says, setting it on the bedside table. "The special lid keeps it warm."

"Hey." Levi's hand shoots out, more steady than it had been an hour before, and catches Irvin's wrist. "Thanks."

_For not abandoning me at the first cough._

_For smuggling a rich man's food down for me._

_For saving me when I haven't done shit for you._

_For not being everything I was afraid you were._

Irvin hesitates, then leans down and brushes a soft kiss across his lips. It's so sudden that Levi doesn't have a chance to pull back, but his eyes go wide and his heart thuds, staring up at the big man. "You'll get sick too," he says, unable to think of anything else.

Irvin looks a little flustered himself. "Well. It'll be worth it."

The door closes behind him, and even without anyone else in the room, Levi doesn't feel so alone.


End file.
